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My boss, a successful stock broker for a global financial firm, was an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War. He spent a year in Vietnam coordinating search and rescue teams that flew helicopters to rescue fighter pilots whose planes had been shot down. In listening to some of his stories, I glimpsed the life-and-death struggle that shaped him, and many from his generation, forever.
It is no wonder to me that we now have several decades of young people who are selfish, greedy, and consumed with material possessions. While I am grateful we have experienced less war than generations gone by, perhaps in the end, it has done us no good. The war we experience now we watch on TV or read on the Internet. What we know of war is the theory and criticisms of observers, not the service and patriotism of participants.
The day my boss arrived in Vietnam, he learned that the young man he had lived next door to in the dorm at Texas A&M University had been shot down that morning. Seven years later, to his great surprise, he received a phone call from the same man. His friend had been in captivity all those years, and my boss was one of the first people he called when he finally arrived home.
Fighter pilots were required to fly 100 missions before they could return home. Some of them flew a mission every day, just to get it over with, so they could be home as soon as possible. Some were shot down and killed on their 99th or 100th mission, and never made it. Those who survived 100 missions were celebrated by their comrades with noisy flyover of the landing strip, a dunk in the swimming pool and drinks all around.
When a plane was loaded with bombs, they could not land without deploying the bombs. If the plane began to have technical troubles, and the pilot was concerned for his safety, he had to dispose of the bombs in a remote place in the jungle before returning to base. My boss, a Second Lieutenant, once went with a team to locate uninhabited sites for this type of disposal. Deep in the jungle, one of their jeeps got stuck in the thick mud created by daily rains. Unable to push the jeep out of the sludge, the team looked up to see a native watching from the edge of the clearing. Then another pair of eyes, and another, and slowly about fifteen natives emerged from the trees. Without a word, the local men stepped behind the jeep and put their muscle into pushing it out of the mud pit. One young man was only 13 or 14 years old, and as a small thanks, my boss offered him a cup of cool water from the Igloo in the back of the jeep. Staring at the pure water, the boy slowly poured it into the mud pit at his feet, then bent and scooped up a cup full of murky, brown water. Then he slowly drank until the cup was empty.
When a fighter pilot was hit, he had a fast decision to make: Eject immediately over the jungle and risk almost certain capture by enemy fighters waiting below; or take 3-4 precious seconds to fly the plane closer to the mountains and eject there. If he made it to the mountains, his risk of capture decreased substantially, and a beeper he wore sent a signal to helicopter teams to locate and rescue him. But there was no predicting how long after being struck the plane would explode. If he waited too long he would be killed before he could eject.
My boss said his teams would do one or two rescues per day in the year he was deployed, but many would not be successful. Often the pilots were captured or dead when the rescue teams arrived. He lost many comrades during the time he was there.
I think about how attentive my boss is to detail now, how hard he has worked to have a successful career, send his children to college, be a good father and grandparent. How he insists on learning new things, how he is persistent with certain tasks, even to the exasperation of the team that works for him now; and I wonder, how much of the character, strength, and integrity is a result of serving our country and watching friends die doing so. There is no bitterness, only pride. He is fiercely loyal and fiercely Republican. He is determined and precise.
The experiences of his generation, and the ones before who experienced World Wars and the Great Depression shaped the entire American culture for decades. These days, it seems we have lost the precious perspective of those times, because our lives have been too easy.
We worry about how to pay our mortgage, student loans, car loans, retirement funds, gym memberships and credit cards while working three jobs and shuffling our children between school, church, soccer, and music lessons. They worried about whether they would live to see another day.
We complain about our weight, the weather, the government, our pastor, traffic, poor customer service, our employer, taxes, and a thousand minor inconveniences. They served and loved and committed and paid the price.
Something about that perspective I want to grasp, to lay hold of for my generation, for my children. Not that I wish the ugliness of war and death upon us. I just wonder at the correlation between
suffering and persistence,
challenge and greatness,
failure and success,
fear and determination,
pain and long suffering,
sorrow and joy,
service and gratitude.
Service.
Certainly it breeds selflessness and a broader perspective of the world. There is a saying that we can tell how much of a servant’s heart we have by how we respond to being treated like a servant. Servants don’t get thanked, receive low to no wages, get bossed around, do the hard work no one wants to do, yet are expected to continue doing so by people who are proud and comfortable, viewing their own humanity as more worthwhile than that of a laborer. Could we put ourselves, and our children, in situations to experience this type of service? By so doing, could we inspire hard work and determination, while also motivating servants to become gentle leaders and supervisors when they are grown?
Suffering.
Certainly too much suffering has broken many people. But perhaps some suffering has appropriate and necessary purpose in our lives and we should embrace it, not for the moment of pain in brings, but for the character it can produce if we choose. And perhaps when raising our children, we need not shield them from every sorrow and suffering, but instruct them how to grow through it and become greater humans as a result of it.
When we eliminate service and suffering from an entire generation, what a dangerous world we have created.